Baseball Musings
Baseball Musings
May 16, 2007
Curt Hamels

Cole Hamels is starting to remind me of Curt Schilling's best years with the Diamondbacks. Schilling would strike out a ton of batters, but give up a good number of home runs. Because he tended to keep the bases empty, the long balls didn't hurt him much. Tonight, Hamels pitched eight innings, striking out eleven. He walked one and allowed two hits, one of them a two run homer. But with the Phillies scoring six, that was fine. Hamels now has 70 K in 62 2/3 innings and he has allowed eight home runs. I'll take that kind of pitching.


Posted by David Pinto at 11:39 PM | Pitchers | TrackBack (0)
Comments

re: cole hamels

hamels numbers may look like schillings, but his pitches and mechanics look a lot more like lefty carlton's.

like carlton, hamels is a very tall, thin lefthander with a beautiful delivery and excellent mechanics, who can throw the fastball, curve and change to almost any spot he wants. Carlton's out pitch was the slider; Hamels' is the change. They're similar in the sense that both of them fool(ed) hitters very badly with their offspeed stuff.

carlton used to make hitters look really silly and bad with his offspeed stuff.

Hamels does the same.

Schilling by contrast, relies much more on his fastball and blowing the ball by people. He has several types of fastballs and can move it around, but he doesn't rely on his off-speed stuff to the degree Carlton and Hamels do.

Tall Lefties are in a class of their own. Schilling most clearly resembles Roger Clemens; Jim Bunning; Don Drysdale; Tom Seaver; and Robin Roberts; to name but a few. Hamels is similar to Carlton; Jim Kaat; Curt Simmons (great curve and great fastball, but great off speed stuff later in his career) and other similar.

Hamels right now is on pace for the cy young award for 2007 in the NL. Chase Utley incidentally is on pace for the MVP award this year.

--art k philly

Posted by: art kyriazis at May 21, 2007 11:22 AM
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